Imposing forced amalgamations and the centralisation of services risks everything and solves nothing. The lengthy Future of Local Government Review Interim Report leaves many questions unanswered; dangerously it creates more questions than it answers.
The government have betrayed their commitment of not forcing amalgamations onto Tasmanian communities. They are telling Tasmanians we can’t be trusted to understand what is best for our own communities. They argue democracy is for the few, not for all.
When we talk to workers and community members, we hear them say the government’s decision to force mergers is a predetermined outcome. The government thinks they can fool Tasmanians by using words like ‘boundary re-draw’ or ‘consolidation’, but these phrases are weasel words. The government is determined to force amalgamation, jamming council regions together to make bigger councils. And Tasmanians are awake to it.
Local Government Board Chair Sue Smith says the areas are not a predetermined outcome, but the report itself states the maps are the “beginnings of a set of principles (the board) think will make for robust councils.”
Ratepayers are not fools; they will know this is barely-hidden code for amalgamation.
On the one hand the board says it wants to pursue “community-centred consolidation”; at the same time, it tells ratepayers and councillors democracy will be curtailed outright: “substantive structural reform… cannot be achieved on an ‘opt-in’ or voluntary basis.”
What the board and the government are saying, in other words, is whatever the ratepaying public’s views are, they can be disregarded – because we know better.
This disregard extends to telling ratepayers in the smallest regional councils their fears about lack of representation are “only one aspect of community representation and engagement.” Forgive us for our cynicism, but the whole point of local democracy is being able to approach your local member of council and have your voice heard. This fact seems lost on the members of the board, who are long on reassurances and very short on any substantial evidence for their claims of ‘widespread support’ for these sweeping changes.
In truth, the board found only 20 per cent of Tasmanians viewed their council services negatively. That’s not a mandate for change. It’s hard to understand how the board and the government can argue otherwise.
Less than a third of Tasmanian councils have expressed support for amalgamation, and it’s hard to see how these views will change in the future.
Those councils saw what happened in NSW and Victoria when councils were decimated in the name of neo-liberal ‘efficiency’ – the rate hikes, loss of services and jobs, reform costs to the ratepayer, disposal of public assets, and loss of local representation.
Many councils have never recovered, and many people in those councils live with entrenched lack of resources and amenity. Council workers saw wage cuts, while a bloated middle and upper management grew ever larger.
Council workers live, work, and spend in their local communities; they understand better than central committees what people want. Workers tell us if they are forced to travel further for work, in a time of real wage decline and high living expenses, they may have to leave their jobs. Quoting council workers as saying they would work for an amalgamated council doesn’t mean they want to – it means some have little choice in economies straightened and strangled by amalgamation.
Losing council workers in parts of Tasmania would cause economic chaos, ripping through and potentially destroying some towns.
It will cause devastating and permanent damage to large and small Tasmanian communities, withering their ability to determine their own futures and needs.
Lisa Darmanin is Branch Secretary of the Australian Services Union Victoria-Tasmania.
